Queens College offers an accelerated MA option in Neuroscience. The program allows undergraduate students to take graduate courses as electives in their senior year that can be applied toward both to their undergraduate and graduate degree. After earning their Bachelors, students in this program continue on directly to complete their Masters degree in Behavioral Neuroscience, having already completed a portion of the core requirements during their undergraduate work. This reduces the total time required to achieve the Masters degree and eliminates the gap that often arises between graduating with a Bachelors degree and applying, being accepted and starting a Masters program.

Who is this program for?

This program is aimed at students interested in developing a career in neuroscience. An emphasis is placed on research and pursuing doctoral level training, but an MA in neuroscience degree may facilitate non-academic careers in neuroscience as well.

Students’ undergraduate research experience may be in neuroscience or allied disciplines, including molecular and cell biology, biochemistry, computer science and others.

What are the benefits of the program?

Students can achieve a graduate degree in neuroscience in less time, facilitating more rapid career advancement and saving time and money.

Students may continue research they started as an undergraduate and further develop that work for their masters thesis. Often how much a student can accomplish in their research, both as undergraduates and as masters students, is constrained by time limitations. This program allows students, where both the student and mentor are willing, to extensively develop a single project across both their undergraduate and graduate career. The goal would be to deepen the students’ knowledge and provide greater opportunities to produce tangible accomplishments, such as published papers and abstracts/posters at national professional meetings.

Alternatively, students may use the accelerated program to explore research in two very different areas. For example, a student may have conducted animal based research as an undergraduate and decide they would like to obtain experience with human research as a graduate student.

When students take graduate neuroscience courses as an undergraduate, they pay undergraduate fees, reducing total costs of obtaining their MA degree. In addition, there are no application fees.